Tanzanian tycoon Ally Edha Awadh has gone to court in a bid to overturn a ruling that revoked the environmental licence for his firm's cooking gas facility in Kilifi County.
Lake Oil, the firm which is a subsidiary of Mr Awadh’s Lake Group and which owns the facility, petitioned the court on March 18, seeking to avert closure of the plant.
The appeal follows a ruling by the National Environment Tribunal which on March 10th this year, revoked the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) permit issued to Lake Oil, citing inadequate public consultations with the local community.
Revocation of the licence has placed the continued operations of Lake Oil’s facility in doubt--threatening to deal a financial blow to Lake Oil, given the billions of shillings that the firm sunk into the project.
“It is proposed to ask the honourable court that the tribunal’s judgement, decree, and order made on March 10th be set aside… that the honourable court be pleased to validate and uphold the Environmental Impact Assessment License No. NEMA/EIA/PSL/8728,” Lake Oil, through its lawyers, said in the petition.
Lake Oil says that it has already completed construction of the plant whose capacity is 22,000 tonnes of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG).
Residents of Kilifi went to court last year seeking to have the project halted on allegations that Lake Oil did not undertake adequate public participation. They (petitioners) hold that the lack of adequate public participation has exacerbated the project’s environmental and safety risks.
An EIA helps to pick and mitigate potentially negative environmental and social impacts of a project, helping an investor to effectively protect local communities and ecosystems.
Mr Awadh’s Lake Oil and Taifa Gas, which is owned by fellow Tanzanian tycoon, Rostam Aziz are leading a number of private and government-owned firms that are seeking to set up LPG handling facilities at the Coast.
The entry of Mr Awadh and Mr Aziz into the LPG imports handling business is key in ending the dominance of African Gas and Oil Limited, which is owned by Mombasa-based tycoon Mohamed Jaffer.
Increased players in the LPG import-handling business are anticipated to lower the fees charged to oil firms and pass the gains to consumers through price cuts.
